HostGator Web Hosting Deals Based in the United States, HostGator offers a range of solutions including shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, cloud hosting, or even reseller hosting. While dedicated hosting plans give the option of Windows and Linux as the underlying operating systems, all VPS and shared hosting plans are based on Linux. HostGator defaults to CentOS 7 for all of its Linux installations, but you can request CentOS 6 if that's more your speed. Shared hosting plans start at $2.95 per month for a three-year subscription and can be tempting due to unmetered bandwidth and disk space. However, keep in mind that the host will ask you to reduce your resource usage if your needs exceed 25% of the total available resources. Even so, HostGator says that its shared hosting plans should be sufficient for small to medium-sized business websites. Unlike many other hosting providers that allow backups out of the box, with HostGator you have to separately purchase the CodeGuardBasic service for $2/month. The service provides automatic daily backups, 1 GB of storage space, and three restores per month, and you can also restore the entire site, or any file, to a previous state with just one click. While the plans also include a website builder, it's quite limited and you'll need to purchase a separate plan if you want to put together an entire website spanning multiple pages. However, the products that HostGator offers are surprisingly good, especially for small budgets.
HostGator web hosting subscription options:- 36-month plan: € 2.64 per month (total cost € 95.04)
Shared hosting
HostGator's shared hosting range is up and running from the ground up. Even the cheapest shared hosting plan, Hatchling, gives you unlimited disk space; unlimited bandwidth, MySQL databases, email and FTP accounts; a free SSL certificate, easy installation of WordPress and the shopping cart (osCommerce and ZenCart) and full cPanel-based site administration. That's more than enough for many personal and business websites, but it's priced at just $2.75 per month on the three-year plan ($6.95 on renewal). At the top of the line, the business plan supports unlimited domain hosting and adds business features like free dedicated IP and premium SSL certificate. This has a very low general price of €5.95 per month for three years and renews at a still reasonable price of €14.95 to €16.95, depending on the length of the subscription (1 month to three years). All plans are backed by a generous 45-day money-back guarantee, subject to the usual restrictions (if HostGator already paid to register a domain for you, for example, it won't be refunded). The only small issue we could see was HostGator's choice of auto-installers. Many web hosts offer Softaculous, a smart platform that simplifies the installation process for WordPress, Joomla, phpBB, PrestaShop, Drupal, Magento, and hundreds of other popular web applications. HostGator is primarily focused on WordPress, with only a handful of others. This will be fine for most users, but if you're looking for something else, you may need to install and configure it yourself.
Application hosting
HostGator offers no-frills WordPress hosting at a very low price, but without some of the high-end features you'll get with more niche competition. The Starter plan supports a single site with an average of 100,000 users per month for $5.95 per month for three years, for example ($9.95). The business plan includes more resources, can handle three sites and 500,000 visitors per month, and is priced at €9.95. per month for three years, €22.95 on renewal. HostGator also offers a free migration service to move your existing WordPress site to the new account, while automatic WordPress updates should keep your site properly patched. Liquid Web's WordPress plans include a sandbox to allow testing of updates without breaking your production site, and a very smart update system that can automatically update WordPress and plugins, and trigger an alert in case of a problem. . Bandwidth is "limited" to 2TB per month, probably enough for most users. It's a great product, but it's priced at €19 billed monthly, or €15,83 annually, so if WordPress basics are all you need, this is still the best deal.
Create a website
After a simple registration, HostGator's shared hosting plans have a variety of tools to help you build and manage a website. There is an Install WordPress link, for example. This takes you to a page where HostGator offers to set up WordPress for a fee (starting at $99 with a $49 WordPress theme credit), and if you're not careful, it's easy to assume you should choose one of these options. However, these are just overzealous upsells, and you can install WordPress yourself by entering a few blog details: title, admin username, email, etc.
It has simple tools for installing WordPress and other applications (Image credit: HostGator) A Softaculous setup allows quick installation of over 400 other applications, including Drupal, Joomla, Magento, PrestaShop, phpBB, MediaWiki, and more. This is probably the best of the automatic installers, but for some reason HostGator also includes a similar (but more basic) one-click installer.
Gator Website Builder includes over 200 professionally designed web templates (Image credit: HostGator) Shared hosting packages also include a free Weebly Builder plan. It has a great drag and drop editor, the site can be hosted on its own domain, and there is free SSL. The trap ? Well, there are two: your site is limited to 500MB and it shows ads. You can upgrade as part of a shared hosting plan starting at €5.99 per month for three years, which removes ads and space limits, and includes site search, password protection, HD video and audio support, etc. . But if you're looking for drag-and-drop simplicity, check out HostGator's Gator Website Builder first: prices start at $3.84 per month and you can get ecommerce support for less than $10 per month over time.
cPanel gives you everything you need to control and manage your site (Image credit: HostGator) If you're a power user who doesn't need this grip, that's fine; A full installation of cPanel gives you all the FTP, SSH, database, file management, and domain features you need to get your site up and running.
HostGator's customer portal is clean and easy to use (Image credit: HostGator)
Site administration
HostGator Customer Portal is an online control panel where you can manage your account and take full control of your web space. It's very rich in text with a bunch of links, but a lot of them relate to optional extras. “CodeGuard Backup” sounds intriguing, for example, but unless you bought it when you signed up, you'll only get an upsell attempt if you try to persuade yourself to buy it now. Despite these annoyances, the dashboard stands out with its many practical touches. A "Control Panel" section includes links to common site administration modules (email accounts, webmail, databases, file manager) and with one click you can upload files, create user accounts, messaging or any anything else you need to do.
A comprehensive support site includes many helpful guides and tips (Image credit: HostGator) Don't know how to do something? Just start typing in the search box and the site will immediately display matching articles. There is a lot of content, carefully organized, and we usually found what we needed with a click or two. If you're not so lucky, support is available 24/7 via live chat and phone (free to call in the US). We've always had good results with HostGator support, and this time was no different. When we tried the live chat, a helpful agent responded within two minutes, immediately understanding our question and giving us solid, specific advice—exactly what we needed.
We use the Uptime.com service to check the uptime and response time of our HostGator site for one week (Image credit: Uptime.com)
We started our performance tests by setting up a simple static website on our HostGator plan, and then used Site Uptime to check its uptime and response time for a week. Our site was never down during the monitoring period. This is what we expected after only a week of testing, but it was still nice to see. Response times averaged 378ms, at the slower end of the entry-level shared hosting market (most providers average between 200-400ms). There is better "worst case" news from HostGator. In over 2000 tests, the slowest response on record was just 556ms, much better than many hosts (the current average of our last 30 reviews is 891ms). As a final check, we use the Dotcom-Tools website speed test to check our site load times from 16 locations across the US and Europe. This gave much better results of around 870 ms, putting it in the upper middle of the shared hosting competition. This is good news for HostGator, but keep in mind that these comparisons are based on each provider's low-end shared hosting products. If you're looking to buy a VPS or other high-end plan, the results can be quite different.
Final verdict
HostGator's premium VPS and dedicated plans lack configurability, but their shared hosting plans offer a lot of features at a very reasonable price, top-notch support to keep things running smoothly, and a generous money-back guarantee.45 days warranty that there is no risk. A smart choice for shared hosting users who need more.
Is HostGator a good web host for beginners?
With its cheap prices and offers, HostGator should appeal to most newbies, and even professionals and SMBs. The website builder, offered as part of shared hosting plans, makes it easy to implement a basic website in no time.
Is HostGator reliable?
HostGator has grown from three servers in 2002 to over 12,000, serving over 2.5 million customers. Part of the reason for its stellar growth has been solid support...